Every Precious Seed
by liptonrm
Summary: Building a new life is more difficult then they ever imagined. Spoilers for season 2 finale.


Disclaimer: Ron Moore owns it, I'm just playing with it. No profit of any kind is being made.

Spoilers through Lay Your Burdens Down, Pt. 2

**M**aren stretched, her back aching from hours spent over seed beds in a never-ending attempt to encourage new life. She sighed, pushing sweaty strands of dark hair out of her face. The light was already beginning to fade with too little accomplishment.

"Do you think it's enough?" Petro asked from behind her, his voice straining with exhausted hope.

"If the Great Mother and Her Daughter will it to be so." She wondered if a phrase, spoken enough, became its own kind of prayer or if the words, instead, lost all meaning and drifted away to join all of the other forgotten and unfulfilled prayers that coated the heavy-hanging sky.

"So say we all." Petro intoned, his words just as rote, his face just as weary.

**S**he stirred the thin soup in her bowl, hungry but not certain she could eat. Supplies were running low and she shouldn't waste what she'd received or risk the Mother's displeasure. She sipped slowly, allowing time to savor in gratitude. It still tasted of dust and mold.

The fire hissed and Maren looked up, shocked out of her reverie. "Frakking clouds." John seethed, the precision of his Virgonese accent enhanced by anger, as he kicked more dirt into the fire.

"Hey, stop that." Someone desultorily complained from the shadows on the other side of the blaze. John paced around the fire, too far into his frustration to hear. Maren sighed, it must be a Third Day.

"It's not as if the climate is any help." John continued. "There isn't a decent growing season to be had, just replaces cold rain with an even colder one. Than, of course, there's the nebula which is superb for hiding from Cylons but shite for getting any kind of direct light from that star out there."

John took a breath and Maren rolled her eyes to the heavens. Now would be an ideal time for Zeus to send a thunderbolt and save them all the annoyance.

"But it's the frakking clouds that really tear it." John plunged on with no sign of godly interference. "They block out most of the UV, thereby stifling most plants as seedlings. We're lucky if we can coax them to sprout at all but there's no way we can get them past that stage. Thank the Lords the hybridization is starting to show some good results but it'll be another year before it bears fruit." John shrugged, an exaggerated gesture of defeat.

"The potatoes should be mature soon." A small voice from Maren's right responded.

"Thank Demeter for that." Joyhn sighed as he sat down again, defeated.

Maren could feel the eyes of the entire group turn to her, prayers in their eyes and question on their lips, as always.

"So say we all." Maren intoned gravely and hoped that would do in place of a sermon.

**T**he nights were dark without the stars. Maren lay on her cot, exhausted yet incapable of sleep. Her worries and fears rose up and chased her around: of Cylons, of failure, both of the crop and of the human race. She could hear nuclear explosions in the far-off thump of landing Raptors and see the wan and starving faces of her friends and neighbours as crop after crop failed.

She rolled over and willed herself to focus on the soft snores of Sister Jana who was soundly sleeping in the cot across the tent. She was the only other initiate of the Kore Mysteries that had survived the Holocaust. It had been daunting, at first, to think that they were the only ones left but she had quickly found a great comfort in not being truly alone. Too many of the Mysteries were lost, perhaps never to be restored.

Maren focused on their shared dream, dredging up their vision of a future shrine to the Great Mother that would be built somewhere in the surrounding hills, private yet easy for any pilgrim to find. They would build a new alter and train new priests. She could see the gleaming halls in her mind's eye and could smell the flowering garden that the people of New Caprica would dedicate to Demeter, as the citizens of the Colonies had always done. It would be a place of beauty and learning and safety and Maren could see it more clearly then she could remember the faces of her dead family, lost somewhere on Geminon.

A new wave of hope flowed through her and even though she knew it would be gone by the morning she welcomed it with joy and let herself follow it down to sleep.

**T**he laughter of children startled her from her work. She looked up and saw them gathered around Petro as he explained his work with grand gestures and funny faces. She smiled to see them laugh with him and to see the gentle look on the teacher's face, a baby clasped in her arms. Maren had never seen Petro look so happy.

"It's good to hear them laugh." a warm, expressive voice commented from her right.

"Yes it ..." Maren swallowed the end of the sentence when she saw who it was who had spoken to her.

"Madam President." She gasped, rubbing her hands on her tunic in a desperate attempt to clean them.

"It's just Laura now." The former president said kindly, handing her the trowel that she had unknowingly dropped in her moment of shock.

"Thank you." Maren said. She could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. She couldn't remember the last time she had felt so embarrassed, not since her initiate days, surely.

"Your working miracles here." Roslin said, her hand gesturing to the rows upon rows of seed beds.

"We're doing what we can." Maren couldn't keep the pessimism from her voice. She froze when Roslin turned and pierced her with a sharp look. She felt unmasked, certain that all of her fears and cynicism were laid bare.

Roslin smiled at her sadly and suddenly Maren could breathe again. "We never see our miracles until they've come and gone, for better or worse." There was a deep regret in her voice and Maren knew that more was being said then she could ever hope to understand.

"Mrs. Roslin, look at this." A high child's voice pulled Roslin's eyes away, a smile brightening her face so suddenly it was as if it had always been there. The child's face was lit up with excitement as she held up a potted seedling.

"It's beautiful, Tacia." Roslin enthused. "What do you think, Sister?" She asked, handing it over to her.

"It's a miracle." Maren said reverently. She smiled down into the child's bright eyes. In that moment she could feel the presence of the Mother all around them. Roslin smiled at both of them, one hand on Tacia's head and the other on Maren's arm in benediction.

**T**he day the Cylons found them dawned as gray as all of the days before it had. Maren stood there, her entire body frozen in shock as Centurions marched through their city and Raiders buzzed below the heavy clouds. She could feel her friends, her neighbours, her family, gathered around her, frozen with the same fear.

With a strength she didn't know she possessed she wrenched herself away from the horror playing out before them. She bent over seedlings, determined to work till the bitter end. She prayed as she worked, desperate for the gods to finally heed her cries.


End file.
